Education is a political football – as whoever is in office tries to push through reforms based on their ideological perspectives, irrespective of what’s gone before or the impact on schools. In edtech this has led (in the UK and elsewhere) to waves of edtech ‘revolutions’ most of which have failed dismally and at great […]

One of the most interesting projects that I have developed over the last few years was ed-invent. Initially a JV with Cambridge Assessment I decided to closed it down in late 2015. The idea behind ed-invent was to try and change the discourse about and role of educators in edtech. My fundamental frustration was that […]

It’s 2016 and after more than 10 years of attending BETT I’m still looking forward to what I will see this time. BETT is about edtech but the bit I’m interested in can be found in the Futures section, located fortuitously next to the Press Office. This year I expect to see several companies who […]

BETT 2015 was the biggest and baddest edtech show on the planet; forget FETC and ISTE (just for educators), GSV/ASU (for edtech startups & deals) and SXSWedu (parties and ….parties) – BETT is the bomb. I was all set for 13th visit to churn out another story bemoaning usurious food prices, travel hassles, the lack […]

I’ve just read a story in the Evening Standard by Oscar Williams-Grut (what a great name for a journalist). His story sang the praise of MMC London Fund, described as ‘a partnership between the Mayor’s Office and fund manager MMC Ventures’. According to Williams-Grut, in 13 months the fund has invested £5.1m (or 36%) of […]

Tutoring is a huge market; north of £2bn p.a. in England alone. I have written about it several times including one story titled, Tutoring, unstaked claims to a goldmine? Tutoring can be a goldmine, which is why some edtech investors seem to approach it with all the restraint of a horde of prospectors stampeding to […]

This ranking of top 15 UK edtech influencers on Twitter, comes from Influmetrics a great new tech service that’s being developed by my friend Flemming Madsen. These 15 are a subset derived from Influmetrics edtech leaderboard. If you want to know more about Influmetrics and their technology then you can email flemming@influmetrics.com Rank Name screenname […]

With some ten million people in the UK currently in full-time education, it’s no surprise that education is not only one of the most important, but also one of the largest sectors of the economy. While the ‘business’ of education is unequivocally secondary to the practice and values of teaching and learning, the economics are […]

The highlight of my trip to SXSWedu 2014 was sitting on Dell’s Innovation in Teaching and Learning panel. I won’t try to go onto the details, but if you want to watch it then it’s online here. If you are wondering why I have a coat and scarf on, well it was about -10-C inside the […]

It takes half a day to fly 5,000 miles from London to Austin for SXSWedu, a significant investment in terms of time and money. I went to SXSWedu in 2012 when it was still new and pretty chaotic but the keynotes of Dame Marjorie Scardino and Arne Duncan were great. In 2013 I had to […]